You or a paid professional? Or did you use a program? Any pointers to pass along to others?

I wrote the bulk of mine. I absolutely believe each person should do as much of the work as they can .... my CPA did the numbers part, but I had to provide the data to enable him to put together those tables of numbers, break even chart, etc. The reason I think its so beneficial is because it tells you about your business.

When I sat across from the banker and was able to recite stats, numbers, data, trends, etc. ...... all learned from doing the biz plan, it showed that I KNEW this business. Can you imagine his impression if he had been asking me all of those questions and I had no idea?

One banker told me, "We don't read this whole thing. It's really more of an exercise for you than it is information for us."

True. Very true.

You can get a lot of info from the internet. (Not 20 minutes ago, I just researched number of marriage licenses issued in my county so I could update my stats.)

Thanks Debi!

I agree that I should write as much as I can. I have a degree in English so I'm confident in expressing my thoughts. I'm terrible with numbers so I see that a CPA would be in order. I guess I'd need to hire one down the road anyways.

Great point about anwering the hot questions for the banks. I want them to believe that I know what I'm doing and I love looking up stats anyways.

There are just so many internet business plan samples that I thought maybe I should do it myself but wasn't sure if that was the way to go. Thanks again for your input.